Virginia at War, 1865 ed. by William C. Davis and James I. Robertson Jr. (review)

This edited collection, the last in William C. Davis and James I. Robertson's five-book series on the history of Virginians during the Civil War, covers a range of topics, including military, political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of the state's history. Its temporal focus is, as the title suggests, on developments in 1865. This was a remarkable year in Virginia history, full of drama, upheaval, and promise, and the book is mostly successful in capturing that distinctiveness. Though more than half of the essays dwell almost exclusively on the first few months of the year, the period when the Confederacy still existed, later chapters give substantial attention to the immediate postwar period, and Virginians' first steps into Reconstruction.

Authors Chris Calkins and F. Lawrence McFall each address what are perhaps the two most notable events in Virginia in 1865: the surrender of Lee's army and the fleeing of the Confederate government from Richmond. Calkins crafts a concise but detailed narrative of Lee's last few weeks with the Army of Northern Virginia, from the tense situation in Petersburg to surrender at Appomattox Court House. McFall's interesting essay highlights the important city of Danville and the role it played in the escape plans of both Lee's army and Davis's Confederate government. He chronicles the one very long week that Davis and his cabinet spent there before the Confederacy collapsed.

Taking a longer view of the troubled Confederacy, Jaime Amanda Martinez focuses on the economic changes the war wrought in Virginia and the responses of the Confederate government to civilians' complaints about shortages, inflation, et cetera. She argues convincingly that government officials worked hard to alleviate civilians' suffering but did not have a sound financial base from which to fix the problems. They prevented mass starvation and prolonged civilian unrest, but their solutions could not save Virginians from severe hardship in 1865.

Rebounding from such suffering as well as the disappointment of defeat was especially difficult for Virginia's soldiers, according to Kevin Levin. His excellent essay on the experiences of Lee's men as they returned home emphasizes the anger, humiliation, and despair they felt and that they carried with them into Reconstruction. For understanding the postwar period, Levin's findings underscore the methodological value of using contemporary personal accounts rather than the romantic, reconciliationist memoirs penned by veterans decades later.

John McClure's piece also addresses the war's aftermath, focusing particularly on how the federal government and "Restored" state government acted. He demonstrates that federal officials were most interested in reestablishing order. Helping the needy and enforcing labor contracts were part of their goal, but so was installing a friendly Republican at the top of the state government. McClure ably explains how the naïveté of postwar governor Francis Pierpont caused considerable political upheaval within the Commonwealth.

The most dramatic outcome of the war, the emancipation of Virginia's slaves, gets full attention in an essay by Ervin Jordan. Arguing that the transition to freedom had mixed results, Jordan offers numerous examples of not only the joy and assertiveness that slaves felt upon emancipation but also the uncertainty and difficulty they faced in a society that still sought to control them and their labor. With such a wide-ranging set of experiences to discuss, this essay could have benefited from tighter organization.

Two of the chapters in this collection illuminate interesting aspects of life in Confederate Virginia, but their conclusions are not specific to 1865. Ginette Aley's essay on home front families stresses the disarray that the war created for black as well as white civilians. Using evidence primarily from earlier stages of the war, Aley does not address how these families' lives were particularly affected by the crises of the war's final months or the Confederacy's demise. Similarly, E. Lawrence Abel's essay is revealing about the...